what are you happy about right now?

What am I happy about? What's not to be happy about?

Christmas is coming. There's the old traditional decorations and the old traditional songs. The streets are full of happy shoppers and the Christmas spirit, right?

It used to be a real tough festival, you know that? This is the time of year when the humans slaughtered the livestock that weren't likely to make it through the winter. They salted and smoked and meat and laid it up in their ice-houses or whatever to get them through the worst. Then they looked at what was left. There'd be something, if they were lucky - there'd be something even if they weren't lucky, if they had good sense.

Then they'd start making their Christmas gifts. Packages of food for the oldest relatives. They made sure their children saw them do that and knew what was right and dutiful for relatives - because the people who'd be giving the presents would be old one day. It was sense and survival to make sure their kids knew how to treat them right when it came. Food and furs and winter fuel, delivered respectfully and with a smile.

The locusts could come or the wolves find the lambs in any year. Fires could take farmsteads and the plague could ride with any random traveller. Fortune could turn for anyone, so those with sense made packages for the poor, too, and lectured every child they could reach on charity.

The Priest or the Shaman would be around talking about Charity and trying to collect all of it and more for their own idea of the "deserving poor". He'd talking about "Right" with the not-so-subtle hint that a good big gift would keep the wolf off your own doorstep. Those with sense paid their tythe.

Some of the foods were perishables, they finished them fast - and under all the feasting and the merriment, the King of The Revels (who was once the Spring Sacrifice) and the flowing bowl, there's the knowledge of the long hard winter still to come, and the ghost stories on Christmas-passing paid homage to those who didn't make it through past winters.

There was a feel to it, a Christmas spirit to that festival. Families and neighbors drew together to forgive those they had ties with and make new alliances against the cold and the hunger, the predators and the snow.
.....................................................

Now? Go through any shopping mall. People worried to death as they try to buy things that they can't afford for people who don't need them and who maybe won't like them, but they'll be insulted if they're left out. Trash prettied up to look like treasure and the kids whining for it. Retail staff on the edge of collapse during flu season - take sick leave now and they'll likely be out of work - and their families expect their Christmas rights, too. The lonely and homeless wandering through a constant barrage of, "Christmas is for families" while the TV tells the kids that their families don't love them unless they buy them the latest in-thing.

What can I say? It's a great season for hot numbers - what's not to be happy about?

Sweet the Singing Demon,
Fandom BTVS,
Words, 356